For Harry, With Love and Steele
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: A bookie winds up deadbut who's that gorgeous PI from Los Angeles and what does Garret's father have to do with it?
1. Chapter 1

A/N I don't own either Remington Steele or Crossing Jordan, this is just a fic that's being posted on a Steele website by Roz and on here by me, well, enjoy it...

He was jostled out of his reverie counting the ceiling tiles by a sharp rap on the door and the appearance of one blonde head. "Mr. Steele, there's a phone call for you, a man named Sam Bisbee?" Steele paused for a moment as he wracked his brain to place the name, and when he finally did, he smiled.

"I'll take it in here Mildred, thanks." He said, leaning forward and picking up the phone the instant the red light flicked on. "Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. So's Your Old Man-W.C. Fields-"

"Is there any movie you haven't seen?" The man on the phone asked, cutting him off.

"Anything that doesn't exhibit a certain cinematic art."

"So how are you boy? Remington Steele is it now? Even have your own secretary. Moved up in the world. Now you're chasing down your own pals."

"I try to avoid chasing down my own pals. So why call me after all this time? Last I heard you were in jail for-what was it?"

"A few bad checks." The man on the other end of the line pause for a minute. "Listen," he continued as he tried to come up with a way to word his request. "I'm kinda in a rough spot and need your help."

"Harry, I'm legitimate now. I have a buisness to run, I'm not going to risk all of that."

"No, no no, that's EXACTLY why I'm calling you, because you've got something resembling a profession that would scare this guy shitless." Steele rolled his eyes.

"So you want me to go to wherever you are-where are you, by the way?" Steele asked.

"Boston." Was the man's almost silent reply.

"Boston! That's all the way across the bloody country!"

"I know, I know, but I really need your help. I'm almost broke, and I wanted to retire, once and for all. Collect my money from him, pay off the little bit that I do owe, and spend the last few years of my life in peace. I'm not getting any younger you know."

"How much does this guy owe you?"

"Two fifty."

"You're doing this over less than three hundred bucks? You can make that playing monty in an hour."

"Did I mention the grand after it?" Steele almost feel out of his chair.

"A quarter of a million? What did you bet on?"

"Five grand on a 50-1 horse." The way he said it was so nonchalant that Steele almost couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Five grand on a fifty to one? What the hell possessed you to do that?"

"Becaues I had the money and I had to spend it, so I put it down on a gut instinct, and won it. But now I could really use that money."

"So you want me to fly out there to tell that bookie to pay up?"

"Exactly what I want you to do. You'd do it for an old friend, won't you?"

"You're asking an awful lot of me mate."

"I could do it myself, but that's asking an awful lot of an eighty year old man." Steele thoguht for a minute.

"Fine. But ONLY as a favor to a friend. In and out. I'm not going to get myself involved in anything more than just being someone that you bring in to put pressure on this guy."

"In and out." The second man echoed. "I get my money, I'll even give you a cut, and you go back to Boston, the only one who looses is Bart."

"Bart?"

"The bookie who I owe the money to."

"Right. I'll catch the first flight I can."

"Thanks." Steele hung up the phone with a dull thud as he realized what he got himself into. He walked out of the office and into the lobby of suite 1157.

"Mildred dear, could you find me the next flight out to Boston?"

"Sure thing boss." The stout blonde secretary-cum-dectective in the making clicked a few times on her computer and revealed a flight out in just over an hour. Two keystrokes later and there was a ticket waiting for Steele to pick up when he got to the airport. "Should I tell Miss Holt?"

Steele thought for a long minute before recalling the fiasco that came about the last time he went off without a trace. "Simply tell her that I'm visiting an old friend, and that I'll be back by the end of the week." With that, he was out the door, ready to pack a small overnight bag to last him for the two days that he expected to be in Boston.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry Macy stood at the gate to where filght 717 direct from Los Angeles to Boston was supposed to land. As the first passengers began to disembark he slid off to the side, waiting for the one he wanted. He sized up everyone coming off the plane before grimacing at the force of habit. Eventually he saw him-he was hard to miss, tall dark and handesome would be the only fitting description and all the women on the plane seemed to have noticed that quite well.

"Harry!" The young man exclaimed when he saw his friend. "How are you! You're looking well."

"As well as an eighty year old grifter can look Mick. Or Remington. Or whatever the hell you call yourselves these days."

"Remington will do just fine mate."

"So you're a bigwig now. A fancy schmancy PI. A mover and shaker it looks like. You know how many california newspapers have at least three articles about you?" Steele grinned.

"Probably most of them."

"Right in one." They walked a ways until they reached the parking lot where Harry hailed them both a cab. He gave the cabbie an adress and leaned back, staring out the window.

"You're awfully quiet mate. Something wrong?"

"Try I'm out a quarter of a million and I'm in a town I have a particular dislike for." Steele gave him a questioning glance.

"I thought you grew up here?" The old man shrugged.

"I did."

"You always used to rave about it. The city, the-Red Sox are they? The clam chowder. And if I recall correctly, you most commonly raved about this little chineese place you used to visit every tuesday-"

"Dim Sung. I know. But hey, people change, and so do their tastes." The taxi pulled to a halt outside of a seedier looking area of Boston, and Harry quickly paid off the cabbie before leading Steele up the stairs.

They paused at one of the doors. "Just go in, and back me up on this. Look like a dectective, threaten to arrest him. Make it look like you have some real power, and tell him all will be good if I get my money." Steele nodded, and Harry knocked on the door, frowning when the first rap sent it inwards. "That's never a good sign." He said, peeking in the doorway. "Bart?" He called to an empty apartment.

They both cautiously entered, and looked around. Harry cautiously looked around the small kitchenette before he was alerted by Steele calling out from the bedroom. "Harry, I don't think you're going to be getting your money. Not from Bart here anyway." Harry cautiously trod over, careful not to touch anything that might tie him to the place. He found Steele crouched over Bart's body, standing just outside a pool of blood.

"My god. What happened?"

"It looks like someone had a grudge against Bart here and decided to shoot him for it."

"We should call the police. You should call the police."

"Why me?" Steele questioned turning around to look at the old man. "Don't tell me you're in trouble with the law again. Is that why you don't want to be here?"

"No, no, no, nothing of the sort." He replied, backing towards the door. "Not with the cops, no trouble with them, but I still would prefer to be far far away from a dead body when you call them. Tell you what, you mentioned Dim Sung, it's two blocks away, I'll meet you there in, oh, about half an hour?" With that the old man was out the door, leaving Steele alone to call the police.

He searched around the small apartment until he found the phone, picked it up, and dialed 911. If Harry's story checked out, there was nothing he needed to worry about, and he knew that he was clean, he had his plane ticket to prove it, he couldn't just leave a dead man lying there to rot.

His thoughts about what he was going to say were interrupted by a young man who looked like he should still be in high school barging in, flashing a badge. "Detective Woody Hoyt, Boston PD."

"R-" He started to say his name, but quickly changed it at the last second. "Richard Blaine." He said simply.

"You the one the called the cops?" Hoyt asked him, and he nodded. The young dectective walked into the bedroom where the body lay. "You touch him at all?"

"Only to see if he was still alive." Steele contemplated making a run for it. His instinct told him he should but smoething made him want to say-a sense of wanting to do the right thing for a poor man who wound up murdered.

Hoyt came back after checking the body. "How did you know the deceased?"

"We uh-" Steele searched for something to say. "Were buisness associates." He finally came up with after far too long of a pause for his liking.

"Well Mr. Blaine, we're going to need a contact number in case we need your help, maybe you saw something that could give us a hand."

"I just landed, I was just stopping by to see Bart to ask if he had any recommendations on hotels." He gestured to the overnight bag still in the doorway. "Tell you what, I'll call you as soon as I find a place to say. Or even better yet, you can suggest a hotel to me."

"Well, I stayed in the Mariott when I first came here, it's a nice place." He admitted.

"Great, that's where I'll be then, I'll give you a call as soon as I check in. What did you say your name was? Hoyt?"

"Woody Hoyt." the baby faced dectective said, handing him a card with his name and number.

Steele picked up his bag and beat a hasty retreat. He was interrupted however by almost running into two men. Steele glanced at them quickly, and immediately felt his hackles rise looking at one of them, and he saw the other man do the same. He stared into the young man's brown eyes.

They were about the same age, although the other man had a good three inches on Steele, and both had dark black hair, although Steele's carefully cropped coiffure was no match for the other man's limp almost greasy looking long mane, and there was something about him that put Steele on his guard-something that he recognized, that sent off a faint alarm in the back of his head. He knew this man from somwhere, but he couldn't think of where, and wherever it was, he knew that this man spelled trouble for him.

The other man, perhaps, surprised Steele even more than the first-not because he put Steele on his guard, but because he bared a striking resemblence to the man who had just hightailed it out of the apartment moments earlier. He flashed a badge to the officer at the door that read County Coroner and he had the sudden idea of just why his friend was so anxious to not be seen around any dead bodies.


	3. Chapter 3

Dim Sung's Chineese restauraunt stood out like a sore thumb. The overly large red and gold awning was in sharp contrast to the rest of the dull brick buildings on the street. Steele slide inside and found Harry at a small table near the back. He sat down across from his friend and glanced around. "So Harry, care to tell me why, if you're not in trouble with the law you want to be seen as far away from a dead body as possible?"

"I swear to you Mick," Harry said, taking a sip of the green tea, "I'm not a wanted man."

"So what are you avoiding?" the food came before the old man could respond. A plate of fried rice was paced before Harry and a nice plate of General Tso's Chicken for Steele.

"Hope you don't mind me ordering for you-I do vaugely remember you saying you liked that spicy crap."

"It's fine." Steele said taing a large bite.

"So how's life as a PI?" Harry asked him, as they ate.

"Not too bad. Good, really. How have you been?"

"So so. Been better. I'm getting old. Far far too old."

Steele shook his head at the old man. "Nonsense." He told his friend.

"Mick, I'm eighty years old! I'm old enough to be your father. Hell, I'm old enough to be your grandfather. Daniel's barely older than my boy! And living as a grifter, well, that's not something beneficial to a man my age. I was going to retire with this money. Take the quarter mil, move out west-there's a great place I saw in the middle of nowhere, where it would just be me and whoever I wanted around me, no hustle and bustle of city life. I could kick back and relax. Put my past behind me."

Steele nodded, he knew the feeling all too well. It was part of the reason he liked being in LA so much. He decided to change the subject. "Do you know anyone who might want to kill Bart?" Four years as a dectective had ingrained into him what questions should be asked and how to ask them. He had learned a lot in those four years.

"Well, I know he didnt have the money. I was going to let him pay me slowly, but I just wanted to have enough to get out of Boston, get somewhere else." Steele nodded and the old man paused for a minute, taking another drink and having a few bites of rice. "I can't believe he's dead, he was such a nice boy too, he was going to get married in a month."

"Do you know her name?" Steele asked him, and he shook his head. "The police might want to know who she is."

"Jesus Mick, you're acting like one of them yourself. Next thing I know you'll be showing up in a nice blue shirt with a badge on it."

"Relax Harry." Steele said, calming the old man. "You had nothing to do with the murder, you know that, I know that, and this is what I do, I figure out who killed people, I figure out why they killed them, I'm a PI. The sooner I figure out who killed Bart, the sooner the police find out, and the sooner you get your money."

That seemed to tame Harry a bit. He seemed more relaxed since Steele told him that he'd get his money. It's not like the man had a reason to like the police though, anyone who served time, much less a substantial number of years in prision hated the police.

"Her name was Michelle. Young girl, she had short brown hair and deep brown eyes, she's a pretty little thing." Steele nodded and reached for his wallet as the waiter deposited the check on their table.

"No Harry, this one's on me." His friend told him pulling out a twenty dollar bill and laying it on the table, snatching a fortune cookie with the same movement. He snaped it open and read what was inside. "I don't know what to make of this one." He said, looking at it, reading and rereading it.

"Well, what is it?"

"Facing problems from your past lead to resolutions in the future." Steele shrugged, just as puzzled as the old man about what the fortune meant, and they both walked back out into the crisp Boston air.


	4. Chapter 4

Garret Macy looked at the man working next to him. The usually relaxed young man looked tense. He had noticed it when they had run into the man in the hall, the two of them, his coworker and the stranger had glared at each other, a look of pure unrestrained hate. The atmosphere felt so thick that Garret could cut it with a knife.

He shook his head and focused on the case at hand. He'd talk to Nigel about it later, right now he had a dead body to focus on. The case looked fairly cut and dried, at least so far as the ME's office was concerned. A bullet to the head, and from the look of it the body had been dead a good hour or so.

Woody had already ID'd the man as Bartolo D'Antoniati, and he'd pass that on to Lilly so that she could go about locating a next of kin for the man. Garret finished and stood up. "Garret, I'll just wait for Mr. Blaine to call and get back to you with what he knew when he showed up." Woody caught the ME on his way towards the door.

"Blaine?" Garret questioned, pausing where he was.

"Yeah, Rick Blaine, the man who found the body." the other man froze.

"six-two, black hair, blue eyes, sickeningly charming Irish accent?" The Brit asked the detective.

"Yeah, Nigel, that's him. You saw him in the hall? He's a buisness associate of Mr. D'Antoniati" Before Nigel could answer another of the officers on the scene held up a book.

"Hey, dectective Hoyt, looks like our guy here was a bookie, and a failure at it as well, this guy was paying out more on a regular basis than he ever took in."

"Rick Blaine." Garret mused for a minute. "Casablanca." He said, realizing where he knew the name from. Woody's eyes lit up.

"Get an APB for him, I can do a full description of him later, but at the moment he's going by Rick Blaine." Woody was out the door in an instant.

Garret and Nigel followed him, albeit rather more slowly, they had nowhere to be, it was up to Woody and the Boston PD to track down this mysterious Mr. Blaine, not them. They reached Garret's SUV and after chucking his bag in the back, Garret got into the car and glared at Nigel.

"What the hell went on back there?" He asked the younger man as he put the car into gear.

"There's something about that man Garret, that I know I recognize, and there's something about him that I utterly dislike"

"I think you're letting a first impression get too under your skin." Nigel shrugged as they drove off back to the familiar halls of the mourge.


	5. Chapter 5

Steele had no sooner stepped foot in the Mariott that had been suggested to him by the baby-faced young dectective than then man who had suggested the hotel to him stepped forward. "Ah Detective-Hoyt was it?" Steele asked the young man as he proceeded towards the registration desk. "I was just about to check in and give you a call. Saved me the trouble." He congenially gave Woody a slap on the shoulder and continued on, but Woody stopped hiim.

"No Mr. Blaine, I'm saving you all the trouble, I'm taking you down the station myself so that you don't have to get a cab." Steele looked at the man confused. "You have the right to remain silent" the man began, pulling Steele's arms behind his back and cuffing them.

The cop finished reading Steele his rights by the time they reached the car and Steele had taken a seat in the back. "I don't understand dectective." Steele protested as they headed down towards the station.

"Your prints were the only other ones there, you were the one that found the body, and we know Rick Blaine's not your name." He had all but bodily thrown Steele into an interrogation room.

"He was dead when I got there, I told you I was there for buisness reasons. When he didn't answer I tried the door, and I poked around a bit thinking he'd be right in, after a few minutes I decided to see if he was asleep or something and that's when I found him like that. He had to be dead for at least a half hour."

"How did you know that?" Woody asked amazed.

"Professional knowledge, you get used to telling when a body's been killed really recently, semi recently or if they've been gone for a long time. And Bart was recent but not quite fresh. I wasn't even in Boston when he was killed."

"Prove it." Steele attempted to reach his jacket pocket and couldn't.

"Check the inside pocket of my jacket. There's a plane ticket in there, call the airport, they'll say my plane landed only an hour ago, I went straight to Bart's after I landed." Woody reached into the pocket and pulled out a plane ticket. He looked at it for a long minute.

"But this is made out to-" the dectective did a double take as he realized who the man before him was "Remington Steele." Woody instantly turned off the bad cop routine "You're Remington Steele?" The young dectective was incredulous. "THE Remington Steele PI extrordinare from the city of Angels?"

"Yes, yes I am." Steele said, attempting to look flattered by the baby-faced cop. "And I'd appricate it if no one would know I was here. The only one who even knows I'm in Boston is my secretary."

"Holt isn't it? You know I've read so much about you and your firm in the papers. Learned a thing or two from you, a real Sherlock Holmes." Steele smirked. If Laura was there she would have murdered the young man for thinking that she was his secretary. "But Mr. Steele-" Woody began, getting back on subject. "What were you doing in Bart's apartment. We know he was a bookie-"

"Who owes a client of mine a quarter of a million dollars."

"How did your client get a quarter of a million dollars in winnings?"

"By betting five grand on a fifty to one horse."

"Well how did he get the five grand?" Woody forgot who it was he was interviewing, this was no longer an idol of his, this was a man who had information, valuable information in a murder investigation.

"I don't know, he didn't say and I didnt ask."

"But why you? Why get a dectective from all the way in California to threaten a guy in Boston?"

"Because I've known him for a long time."

"Why, Mr. Steele, did you lie to us?" Steele rolled his eyes, this conversation was running in circles, as most police questioning tended to do.

"Because I told you, the only one who knows I'm here is my secretary who got my plane ticket, and she doesn't know WHY I'm here, just that I am. I did not want to tie Remington Steele investigations to a two-bit bookie."

"Who is this client that hired you?"

"A friend."

"Who?"

"Is on first." Steele said with a smirk and Woody sighed with exasperation. He knew he would get nothing else out of the private investigator. "Look," Steele started, "I don't know who killed Bart, but I do want to help you find whoever did, I have no stomach for murderers, and my client does need that money." Woody thought for a moment.

"Fine. You see what you can find, and we'll share. You're in this for your client, I'm in this because it is a homicide, we'll work together. But I'm telling you right now, you cannot hide from the press once they get wind of this. I'm not going to protect you from them." Steele nodded and grinned, following the young dectective out.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N here y'all go, enjoy. I feel as if Laura and especially Mildred are a little off, but eh. It still works, dunnit? thanks to garretelliot for beta'ing it!

* * *

"Arrgh! Where is he?" Laura Holt barged through her office with a credit card bill in hand. "Two hundred and fifty dollars for LUNCH." She stormed into the one door to find it empty. "Mildred, where is he?"

Mildred tried to look as if she didn't know, but Laura saw right through the act. "Mildred, are you going to tell me or aren't you?"

"Mr. Steele said that he's going away to visit an old friend and that he'll be back by the end of the week." Laura's eyes narrowed, not at the receptionist and friend, but at the thought of the way that he had dissapeaered.

"Did he say where this old friend was, or who it was?" Mildred shook her head.

"No Miss Holt, the man who called said he was Sam Bisbee." Laura rolled her eyes.

"No idea where he's going whatsoever?" Mildred melted under her bosses' glare.

"He told me not to tell you." Laura wanted nothing more than to rip the man to shreds at the moment.

"Where did he go Mildred?"

"Boston." The blonde woman said, and that just seemed to make Laura more mad than she was before.

"Boston?" She exclaimed and Mildred merely nodded.

"Would you like me to get a plane ticket for you Miss Holt?" She asked and Laura nodded, storming back out to pack and think of various painful ways to kill the man that had become her boss.

She hated him when he did things like this, running across the country to help one of his shady friends from his past. She had no clue who this man was and what illegal activities he was going to wind up involved with in helping him. Odds are that something illegal was going to happen and hopefully like every time before, that he would weasel his way out of it, but there were so many chances one could take.

She hated the waiting, both at the airport and on the plane. All she could think of was ways that she was going to physically harm him once she found him in Boston. She had called ahead to find out that there was in fact, a Remington Steele staying at the Mariott and it didn't take her long to book the connecting room to him, ready to barge in and scream at him.

The look on his face when she finally caught up to him in the lobby of the hotel stopped her, just a bit though. "What the hell are you doing here?" She asked him and he looked her over.

"One could say the same for you." He replied, holding the door to the hotel open for her and helping her with her bag.

"I'm here because you run up a three thousand dollar credit card bill and run off again."

"Laura, Laura, please, at least wait until we're in private to scream at me, you don't want to tarnish Remington Steele's wonderful reputation here in Boston now do you?" She glared at him, seething to herself until they reached her hotel room.

"You!" She screamed, the word conveying all of her emotion. "What are you doing here?" At that moment the hotel room door opened again and a voice called out.

"Mick, you in here?" Harry called as he walked in. "Well hello there, you must be Miss Holt." Harry easily shook her hand, being ever the charmer. "I'm Harry Macy, a longtime friend who's gotten myself into a bit of a pinch, and Steele here was kind enough to help me out."

Laura looked at the two men and sat down. "You two better tell me what's going on, now."


End file.
